Stop the Summer Roundups of America's Mustangs & Burros

America: We now have more wild horses in captivity, 38,000, than in the wild- please take a moment to add your comments below and then follow up with a call.

These are public lands, public horses, public tax-dollars. Over 100 horses just died in the last major roundup. We owe it our wild horses and burros to stop these summer roundups

Call on Congress to conduct hearings & investigations into the BLM's blatant mismanagement of our American Wild Horses and Burros - Demand a moratorium for our wild herds.

The Wild Free Roaming Horses and Burros Act, passed by a unanimous Congress in 1971, was supposed to ensure these charismatic symbols of freedom, a keystone of our heritage, were protected. Shockingly, there are now far more wild horses in government holding pens than in the wild. Wild populations have been slashed, their ranges reduced to only a mere fraction of our public lands and shrinking fast across the West. Charged by Congress with the protection and management of our wild herds, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) instead views “more horses as more problems.” And it would appear that BLM is on an unrelenting mission to eliminate them from their designated ranges- our public lands.

Wild horses must stay in the wild in the West, not on expensive eastern "preserves" in unnatural, sterile and separated groups at immense cost to taxpayers -- as proposed by Secretary Ken Salazar.

Call for an immediate moratorium on roundups.

"Look back at our struggle for freedom, Trace our present day's strength to its source; And you'll find man's pathway to glory Is strewn with the bones of a horse." --Anonymous.

I am calling on you to place an immediate moratorium on wild horse and burro roundups. The Bureau of Land Management needs to be investigated before their mismanagement ends in the complete destruction of our wild herds in the west. Already there are more wild horses in government holding that on the range.

Look closely at Secretary Salazar’s plan of purchasing privately-owned lands at a cost of 100's of millions to warehouse wild horses out of the West, it is an absurd plan to further destroy the wild herds at public expense. Wild horses remain on only 4% of our public lands in the West, they’ve lost 24 million acres in the past 40 years under the BLM’s watch. It is unconscionable to take wild horses from their legal, “cost-free” ranges and places them in maxed out holding facilities that are costing the American taxpayers well over $110,000 per day. The Secretary's first "Salazoo" would be an initial cost of $42 million. Wild horse herds need to stay in the west.

The roundups of American wild horses have only escalated in the new Administration as the BLM works to eliminate wild hroses and burros from our public lands before the Senate can pass the ROAM (Restore Our American Mustangs Act, S. 1579). BLM’s actions are contrary to the letter and the spirit of the Free Roaming Wild Horses and Burros Act, passed by a unanimous Congress in 1971. A revised ROAM Act would restore protections stripped from the original Act over time at the request of special interest lobbyists.

As background, BLM attributes any damage to the lands to wild horses across the west. This is an argument that BLM has waged for decades even when there is scientific data to the contrary. In 1990 the Government Accountability Office Report underscored that wild horse removals did not significantly improve range conditions. The report pointed to cattle as the culprit as they outnumber wild horses and burros on our western public lands over 100:1.

The BLM views more horses as more problems and give no acknowledgement of value of wild horses to their native environment. It is well-known that the horse, with its post-gastric digestive system can reseed the range and greatly aid in building nutrient-rich humus, a critical component of healthy soils. The horses break water, allowing pronghorn, deer, smaller mammals and birds to drink. Unlike cattle that ruminate— often near riparian areas where they defecate in the water—the horses keep moving for most of the day and night to assist in digestion. They prefer upland grazing habitat unlike exotic cattle that cluster in lowland areas along streams and water sources. The horse, as a returned native, fits into an environment from which they were missing for only 7,000 years—the blink of an eye in geologic time. The “green” wild horses should be embraced as part of the eco-system of this wild and beautiful area. Instead, they are marginalized and eradicated.

And at the same time cattle by the thousands remain on the land, costing the taxpayers a minimum of $123 million a year to prop up a failed public lands grazing program. The taxpayer foots the bill for the welfare cattle and then pays for the welfare wild horses in holding. This is a fiscal train wreck and a disaster for the mustangs. Please stand up for the wishes of the American public who love their wild horses and want them protected – not for special interests and a rogue agency.

I’m calling on you to place an immediate moratorium on roundups and hearings on the Wild Horse and Burro program. We don’t have many wild horses and burros left in the wild, in the West.